I am Linda and along with my husband Richard and our dog Muffin we enjoy our summers on the UK's canal system

Tuesday, 8 August 2017

The Fleet Inn at Twyning (River Avon) – Monday 7th August

Hi – we are back and with our VIP
visitors – my sister, Penny and brother-in-law, Jim. Jim spent a week with us last year but it’s
the first time Penny has been onboard since 2013. They had their own narrowboat which was sadly
sold in 2012 but they now have a lovely motorhome.

We had an uneventful journey up to
Tewkesbury and unpacked our stuff before Penny and Jim arrived with their stuff! I’m usually a real tidy freak on the boat but
I so enjoy having people on board that I don’t mind stuff everywhere!

We left Tewkesbury Marina for the short
trip up the river to Twyning where we had planned to meet Penny’s and my
cousins and their spouses at the Fleet Inn.
Ros and Bob live in Cheltenham and they just happened to have Ros’s
brother, Chris, and his wife, Sally, staying.
Chris and Sally spend the summer over in the UK and then the summer
(again) in Tasmania so it was really nice to see them. The meal at The Fleet was very good.

This was our table at The Fleet Inn

The Fleet Inn has stood by the waters of
the Avon for many hundreds of years, serving sailors, travellers using the
ferry and the villagers of Twyning. The current building is largely 18th
century, originally three cottages, built over generations of earlier
buildings. The great inglenook in the bar dates back to around 1500. There is a
priest’s hole behind a bedroom chimneybreast.

Where the ferry used to be!

There used to be a river crossing which
became a right when King Kenulf (or Coenwolf) established a monastery at
Winchcombe in 814 AD and gave the monks land at Twyning, along with the Right
of passage over the river. The word ‘Fleet’ mean “a place where the monks fish”
in early English, and it has also meant “land between two rivers” or “a stream
or creek”. The ferry across the river is
no more though there is a ferry between Tewkesbury and The Fleet Inn. There is some interesting information on the
ferry on the Twyning Village website.